IBM AIX 6 Due for Release on Friday

Via Computerworld.com -

November 06, 2007 (IDG News Service) -- IBM is pulling AIX 6 out of beta and will make the Unix operating system generally available on Friday, the company said Monday.

The new operating system features improved security management and virtualization features, said Scott Handy, a vice president at IBM. The virtualization features take advantage of a hypervisor included in the Power6 processor to ensure 100% uptime of applications.

The Workload Partition Manager included in AIX 6 allows administrators to create multiple partitions, each with customized memory settings for users and application workloads, Handy said. The Live Application Mobility feature, part of the Workload Partition Manager, can shift applications from one server to another on the fly, keeping applications running as they are being moved.

That is essential to keep a Web server or e-commerce site running, and it makes it easy for IT administrators to move applications during regular business hours, Handy said.

The AIX 6 virtualization features blend well with IBM's Live Partition Mobility hypervisor included in the Power6 processor, which can move an entire operating system and its workloads from one server to another while they are running, Handy said. The hypervisor can move AIX 6, Red Hat Linux and SUSE Linux Enterprise operating systems.

AIX 6 also includes the Security Expert feature, which administrators can use to control more than 300 security settings. Administrators can create role-based access to applications and set up authentication features for user-based access to servers and applications.